This weeks featured project : Médecins Sans Frontières Australia

August 2004

Democratic Republic of Congo :: Half a million children to be vaccinated

Médecins Sans Frontières has begun a sixth phase of a preventative measles vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which will take the total number of immunisations to nearly 500 000. The objective of the new campaign will be to cover around 55 000 children between the ages of six months and 15 years of age across the health zone of Yahuma, one of the remotest and most inaccessible areas in the country.

“Vaccination campaigns in most parts of the DRC are complicated due to the totally inadequate infrastructure. You come up against difficulties that you would rarely encounter elsewhere in the world,” explains Maureen Billiet, Médecins Sans Frontières medical reference for the DRC. “For instance, we have to set up an unbroken ‘cold-chain’ to keep vaccines under a certain temperature. Doing so whilst travelling by motorbike for hundreds of kilometres across mud tracks is a daunting task.”

The vaccination is being organised by a nurse and logistician working alongside teams comprised of Médecins Sans Frontières national staff and counterparts from the local Ministry of Health. The teams identify vaccination sites for villages, having first conducted awareness campaigns to ensure that people know why, when and where to come.

The current phase taking place in Yahuma comes as part of a campaign against measles which stretches back to March 2003 and has so far covered 431 285 children (97% of the estimated target population of 448 380). The most recently completed vaccination took place in Djolu, where during the months of April and May this year, 140 teams immunised nearly 100 000 children across an area of 17.357km². Over the next 12 months, children in a further four zones will be immunised.

“Yet despite this and a number of other vaccination campaigns carried out across the country, many children are still not covered and thousands die in the DRC every year as a result of this easily preventable disease,” concludes Billiet.

The vaccination is part of a wider programme in the Eastern Province which provides primary health care in five health zones. Other projects in the DRC range from tackling sleeping sickness to working with victims of violence.

Caring for victims of war
The peace process between northern and southern Sudan that has been underway since 2002 has renewed hopes for an end to Africa's longest-running civil war. The conflict has cost almost two million lives, mostly civilians who have died from hunger and disease. Yet amid talk of peace between the north and the south, the westernmost region of Sudan, Darfur, became the site of a growing catastrophe in the past year.

For years, MSF has assisted people in both northern and southern Sudan, providing basic health care at hospitals or through networks of clinics and health centers. Its work has included treating people with tuberculosis (TB), kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis) and other diseases; providing food; and treating the severely malnourished. MSF also delivers clean drinking water and provides sanitary facilities in areas where displaced people have sought shelter. » More

COUNTRY PROFILE Sudan
Population: 32,559,000
Life expectancy: 57 years
Expatriate staff: 282 | National staff: 3,657
MSF has worked in Sudan since 1979.

Sudan

» Read about other featured projects

Overseas Field Work - Recruitment info evenings